Category: How to Be a Hobbit
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How do you become a Hobbit? First off, you should read my book, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth. Or you can start here where you can find all my blog posts that have–in some way or another–to do with the theme of ‘Being a Hobbit. Some of them are related directly with the book, excerpts and the like, and some are just philosophical rants that relate to the numerous topics covered in a 560 page book.

Hello friends!

The Free Promo ran from Monday through 5pm, CST yesterday, and during that period the book was downloaded by 532 people!

It also went to #1 in all three of its categories in the Free Store, and ended the promo at its highest ranking in the overall Free Store: #541!

For some as of yet unknown reason, the momentum during the free promo did not carry over into the Paid Store, but as of this morning the book has sold 8 copies at $.99, which was enough to push it to #1 in two of its categories, and earn the book the status of Amazon Best Seller!

I have scheduled a promotion for the book that will start this morning by a company I used for The End of Fear Itself: Buck Books. This should push a lot of books out today and tomorrow, and solidify its position as a Best Seller.

Thank you all for supporting this promo! You are the best friends, ever!

Steve Bivans is a FearLess Life & Self-Publishing Coach, the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers, Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians,The End of Fear Itself, and the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living,
If you want to learn how write and self-publish a book to best-seller status, crush your limitations and Fears, and disrupt the status quo, contact Steve for a free consultation to see how he can help you change the world! CONTACT STEVE

The Day Has Come

Twenty-five years ago, sitting on a sweat-stained futon in a living room floor crawling with roaches, I told my friends this day was coming.

One of these days, our enemies, the ones our country have been creating for so long are gonna strike. Then there will be war. And the Fears that drive that war will be used by our own government to declare war on us: to take our freedoms in the name of safety.

All this has come to past. We have been living it for nearly two decades.

It’s time to wake up.

There is no fucking safety. It is illusion.
Freedom comes only to those who live life without Fear.

We are swimming in a stinking sea of Fear.
It’s everywhere you look.

Fear is in the halls of the White House, where it’s always resided but never in so much supply.

Fear is in our television news, which isn’t all that new.

Fear is on our radios, and on our internet.

Fear is in our churches, mosques, and synagogues.

Fear is in the shopping mall and in the grocery store.

Fear is in our grammar schools where they ceased to teach grammar long ago.

Fear’s in our high schools: in the classroom, the bathroom and the lunchroom.

Fear races through college dormitories and lecture halls.

Fear drives us to work for pennies to stave off the Fear of starvation and homelessness.

Fear runs rampant in our minds and enslaves us to those who would employ it against us.

Twenty-five years ago, I told my friends this world was coming. Some of them believed me. But none of us did a damned thing to stop it.

Mostly, we just stood by and watched as the country we were born to, the world we were gifted at birth, slipped into chaos and Fear.

Why did we do nothing?

We didn’t think we could.
We didn’t think we had the power.
We didn’t think that one penniless person, sleeping with roaches, could do anything to stop the plans of the rich and the mighty and the corrupt.

But we were wrong.

Our world is NOT racing to Hell, or Mordor. We just think it is. If we keep thinking that, it will.

And that’s why I sat down over three years ago to write a book about how even the smallest person, the poorest person, the uneducated, and the down-trodden, can affect positive change in the world.

We can take down the towers of corruption.

We can bring and End to Fear.

We can clean up our environment.

We can live in peace with our neighbors.

We can build Shires, not walls.

We can be Hobbits.

We don’t have to live in holes, or move to the country to do it.
We just have to dare to dream of a different world, and then get off our asses and MAKE IT BE.

If you’re tired of watching the same old shit on the news, night after night, droning away about how our world is going to hell in a hand-basket, or slipping into Mordor.

If you’re tired of watching the greed of corporations run the planet into ruin.

If you’re sick and tired of listening to moronic elected officials spout Fear and Hate and Intolerance to gain your votes, to whip up your passions so they can hurl them against your neighbors who are just as sick as you are.

If you’re weary of the endless negativity in this world, that says “Humans are evil, lazy, and self-centered,” then STOP IT!

Just stop.

Breathe for a moment.

You have the power to create the world you want.
ONLY YOU.

No one else builds your world. No one.

It’s time to start building the world we want, not accept the one that’s been sold us.

How can we stop this madness?

How can we, ordinary people, hope to put an end to all the hate, intolerance, greed, and Fear in the world?

It’s all in my books. Trust me, the answers are in there.

I’ll show you that you do have the power to change the world, and it begins within your own mind.

Read them both. Read one of them. But read.
Then join the revolution: the Shire Revolution.

Be a Hobbit. Put and End to Fear. And save the Earth.

Your Friend, Steve

Steve Bivans is a FearLess Life & Self-Publishing Coach, the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers, Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians,The End of Fear Itself, and the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living,
If you want to learn how write and self-publish a book to best-seller status, crush your limitations and Fears, and disrupt the status quo, contact Steve for a free consultation to see how he can help you change the world! CONTACT STEVE

This post is really for my real friends and readers.

I’m not gonna do the ‘SEO’ thing on this one. No ‘focus keywords’ or tags or boxes or bags.

If you’re reading it, I wrote it for you.

I became an author by accident.

I felt like I was living in a fictional world. Hell, I really feel like it lately. I mean, how do you satirize something as ridiculous as the world we live in right now? Especially if you live in the U.S. Fact, or alternative fact, is stranger than fiction!

If you put our current world into a book, no one would believe it! It would be science fiction, or fantasy.

Some days I feel like I live in Mordor, or at least in Isengard. Our political bosses sound like Saurons and Sarumans.

That’s why I became an author. I was fuckin’ pissed off at the state of the planet and the corruption of our governments and the poison in our food, in our air, in the water.

And that’s why I wrote Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth. I had to do something to make a difference in the world., to inspire everyday people, modern Hobbits, to affect positive change in their minds, homes, and Shires.

And many of you helped me to make that book happen.

I ran a Kickstarter, and you contributed so that I wouldn’t starve while writing it. Thank You!

I self-published it over two years ago, and many of you bought it, read it, and have been fans of the book and the Facebook page ever since. Thank you for that, too!

But the book hasn’t been the best seller that it should have been. I didn’t know all the tricks of the trade to get it up the charts. Now I do.

So, I’m asking for your help, once again. Let’s make it an Amazon Best Seller, just like we did for my latest book, The End of Fear Itself!

This Sunday, February 26th, Be a Hobbit, is gonna be FREE for 3 days on Amazon!

Here’s how you can help:

Share, comment, and ‘love’ any posts you see me put up on Facebook about the book.

On Sunday, ‘buy’ a copy of the free Kindle version, if you haven’t already. Try it to make sure. (If you don’t have a Kindle, download the free Kindle app, under the photo of the book, ‘Read On Any Device’)

Once you’ve purchased and read the book, please LEAVE A REVIEW. Reviews are super important to the ranking of the book. Rankings are crucial to sales. Just a couple sentences (20 words or more) is all you need to write. You can write MORE if you want, of course.

Tell everyone you know about the book. On social media, email, phone, in person. That’s it!

With your help we can make the book a best seller. Only with your help is it gonna happen.

I don’t have money to throw at it, like some authors do. All I have are my friends. But my friends are the best there are. Thank you for your support. I’m gonna keep coming back to you in the future. But I think you know, that if you come to me, I’ll be there.

Your friend and fellow hobbit, Steve

Steve Bivans is a FearLess Life & Self-Publishing Coach, the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers, Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians,The End of Fear Itself, and the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living,
If you want to learn how write and self-publish a book to best-seller status, crush your limitations and Fears, and disrupt the status quo, contact Steve for a free consultation to see how he can help you change the world! CONTACT STEVE

Hello fellow Hobbits!

Just a short update on today’s preparations for the upcoming, Middle Earth Day Celebration next Saturday, the 24th!

We did a little cleaning up in the garage, a.k.a, The Prancing Pony Inn, this afternoon. Or I should say, Paysh cleaned up the garage. Duke and I spent most of the time flying tarps over the deck and the new, Prancing Pony Patio Pub!

All in all, a very successful day!

Hope to see a bunch of you Hobbits at Bag End next Saturday! And if you can’t make it here, I hope you’re celebrating Bilbo and Frodo’s birthdays, and the work of Hobbits everywhere to clean up our Middle Earth, where-ever you are!

Steve Bivans is a FearLess Life & Self-Publishing Coach, the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers, Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians,The End of Fear Itself, and the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living,
If you want to learn how write and self-publish a book to best-seller status, crush your limitations and Fears, and disrupt the status quo, contact Steve for a free consultation to see how he can help you change the world! CONTACT STEVE

Hello Friends,

It’s another Friday afternoon, and it’s been a very engaged week (not busy).

While it started off with plenty of things on my Get to Do List, one of those exploded into a flurry of activity, due to some unexpected news.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but one of my dreams is to build a very large, urban farm on the West Side of St. Paul. This is part of my life mission to build Shireness, and to bring Spring again to the trees. The same mission is what propelled me to take the job of manager of the farmers market.

At the center of our world’s problems, is the food we eat. Our food system is really fucked up, as most of my readers already know. One of my missions is to do my part to clean that up, if only in my own neighborhood and city. If we can do that here, then it will be a model that other cities can follow.

Anyway, I reignited the project idea last week, and set a meeting with myself and two friends, to meet this week and go look at a large piece of property on the Mississippi River, just across from downtown St. Paul.

Two of us managed to find time to do that on Wednesday.

We walked all over the abandoned site–which is owned by a holding company–a brownfield (it was a fire extinguisher company site, and the ground has toxins in it). While this doesn’t seem like a prime spot for a farm, there are cities all over America turning such land into urban farms, so it is possible.

After dreaming and planning for about an hour or so, I sent my friend, Jessy, home with her homework: draw up some visuals that will help us sell the idea to the powers that be: an uphill battle, for sure.

But then synchronicity intervened.

The next morning, on Thursday, I got up to find a Facebook event invite from the chair of our local, neighborhood organization to a meeting next Tuesday night to discuss city plans to create a ‘greenway’ on the very site where Jessy and I had stood the day before!

So, that occasioned a lot of restructuring my day, and week, to put a fire under my peeps, and look for more information, and reach out to people I know in the food system, who have dealt with such issues in the past.

It’s been a very engaged week, for sure, and my brain is a bit tired, and sore, but excited.

At the same time, I’ve been promoting, and organizing an event at the Farmers Market this Saturday: Best Side Day, a celebration of all the diversity on the West Side.

And next Saturday is Middle Earth Day, so we’ve been making plans and getting ready for that epic party, here at Bag End.

Anyway, that’s some of the stuff I’ve been engaged with this week, on my Get to Do List!

See y’all, tomorrow afternoon!

Steve Bivans is a FearLess Life & Self-Publishing Coach, the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers, Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians,The End of Fear Itself, and the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living,
If you want to learn how write and self-publish a book to best-seller status, crush your limitations and Fears, and disrupt the status quo, contact Steve for a free consultation to see how he can help you change the world! CONTACT STEVE

[The following are words that I wrote about two years ago, when I finished writing my first book, Be a Hobbit. It was an emotional moment, one that all writers must experience, I’m sure, so I offer this to you as an insight into the mind of one writer, on one significant day.]

It is Written

I have finished writing Be a Hobbit. I weep.

The better part of a year has passed since I began this little book, this tome of 450 plus pages, my manifesto if you will. It’s hard to believe that I have reached the end. Yes, there is still some tedious work to do polishing it up, and formatting and a few pages left to write, but the book is written.

Having never written anything of such length, I had no clue what I was getting into, what paths it would lead, mentally, psychologically, physically, emotionally. It has been one fuck-hell of an adventure, like marching to Mordor with Wraiths on my tail: my own wraiths, my own balrogs, orcs, and dwarvish nature, driving me forward, blocking the path at times, kicking me in the fucking nuts, questioning my own ability to finish, to make sense of so enormous a topic as Saving the Earth.

“How presumptuous of me to tackle such a thing,” I’ve thought more than once since I began.

I hope, and pray that the end result will be humble enough, because I feel very humbled by the experience. I am but one little hobbit in a great Middle Earth. But I know now that there are millions, if not billions of fellow hobbits out there, and we are all kindred, even if we don’t know of the existence of one another. We are still hobbits.

I never believed that I could love the works of the great professor more than I already did, but this project has given me a greater appreciation for his genius and vision. I hope that I have not profaned his work too much. I’ve certainly taken liberties with it that he might, and rightly, roll his furry eyes at. But I think I have preserved his love of the Earth, of Nature, of Trees and living things, of simple living, of humanity, humor, hospitality. That was my intention.

I set out in a sea of negativity, drowning in despair for the world. But despair leads nowhere good. I’m sick of despair. That’s why I wrote this little book, a few humble pages of positivity.

I hope that the message will empower a few hobbits to change their world, to save their earth, in some small way. To make Shires where there was desolation and despair. It can be done. I believe that now, though it took me nearly 50 years to realize it.

Steve Bivans is a FearLess Life & Self-Publishing Coach, the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers, Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians,The End of Fear Itself, and the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living,
If you want to learn how write and self-publish a book to best-seller status, crush your limitations and Fears, and disrupt the status quo, contact Steve for a free consultation to see how he can help you change the world! CONTACT STEVE

#1 Amazon Best Seller for those struggling in some area of their life: be that work, business, money, relationships, health, you name it. At the root of that struggle is a Fear, most likely several. Every block to success in life is based on Fear. More info →

The #1 Amazon Best Seller that will show you how to change the World, turn your neighborhood into a modern Shire, and live happily ever after, as a Modern Hobbit without moving underground! More info →